"He is a man in the office whom I like," she answered. "How much?" "A lot." "And he does, too?" "Yes, a lot." "Hmm--you know I hate to preach, but--" Hesitation. "You think you will, all the same. Go on, I'm listening." "You know I'm liberal. If you were just fooling with this fellow, I'd never peep, honest, I wouldn't." She smiled, "I'll promise to only fool with my next beau." "Now, this is no laughing matter," he rebuked her levity. "If you're really--stuck on each other--it may bust you all to pieces before you're done with it--unless you quit in time." "What do you mean by 'quit'?" "Give up seeing him altogether. It would be safer." "Yes, so it would. But what's that got to do with it?" "A woman can't afford to take chances," he retorted impressively. "It seems to me the people who get the most fun out of life are the ones who do take chances. Your little tin hero, Roosevelt, for instance--you like him because he'd rather hunt a lion or a trust than a sure thing. Jim Horan didn't eat smoke for the money in it, but because he thought a wall might fall on him some day--or might not. That's what he wanted to find out. Well, perhaps I want to find out if a wall will fall on me some day--or not." Al was astounded. There was something more than bold, something hardly decent in the comparison of her own dubious flirtation to a great fireman's martyrdom or a soldier-statesman-sportsman's courage and career. "But, Georgia," he expostulated, "you speak like a man in a manhole. Horan and Roosevelt did their duty taking chances." "Rubbish," she said. "They acted according to their natures and I will act according to mine--some day." He looked unutterably distressed, for he loved her, and foresaw ruin enfolding her. He knew that women aren't allowed to act according to their natures, if their natures are as natural as all that. "I haven't seen Jim for over a year," she went on, "nor heard of him for ten months. He may be dead. He is the same as dead to me. My heart is the heart of a widow--grateful for her weeds. The Church may say otherwise--and I might obey unwillingly--but my own being tells me that there is nothing wrong in my love for Mason Stevens--any more than it's sin to breathe air or drink water. That's how we're made. When I lived with Jim, I played no tricks. But that's over now, it's over for good. What's the difference whether he's under the sod or above it, so far as I'm concerned?" Her eyes were alight and she walked back and forth, gesticulating like a Beveridge, persuading herself that what she wished was just because she wished it. "I've got a few good years of youth left. I'll not throw them away for a religious quibble." "You mean divorce and marry again--openly!" "What does the ceremony matter? I'm not sure we'd take the trouble of going through it," she shrugged her shoulders, "the Church says that it means nothing anyway; that it makes the sin no less."